‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ Season 1 Review: Calibrated, Calculated Lovers

Partners in crime? Season one of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” means it in every sense.

The story of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” popularized by the 2005 action comedy film and 1996 TV series of the same name, revamps the concept of two spies who pose as a married couple with a more extended psychological lens into their relationship. While the Smith couple in the 2005 film each begin unaware of their spouse’s secret occupation, the 2024 iteration instead utilizes their partnership as cover for covert activities, establishing a shared bond of the highest stakes from the get-go. The series offers a complex eight-part exploration of what it means to love, trust, and remain committed to someone who you may or may not owe anything — or everything.

Amidst unanswered questions and buried truths, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” provides a raw glimpse — with a spy-fiction twist — into the challenges and rewards of letting a stranger not only into your life but into the role of your significant other. How does the open, unfiltered communication necessary in a marriage work when you live in a world of coded language and secrecy? Where does one draw the line between sincerity and farce if their entire professional and personal life has been a performance? Chock-full of clever juxtaposition and wordplay, Amazon’s fresh rendition of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” blends the slow-burn of suspense with sparks of action in both the worlds of espionage and romance.

Spy-fi — short for spy fiction — inherently navigates questions of identity and loyalty, forming a neat overlap with the cerebral, perhaps even self-interrogating process of evaluating mutual fit in a relationship. This evaluation recurs throughout the series, probing John Smith (Donald Glover) and Jane Smith (Maya Erskine) to wonder why they were initially matched as a couple in episode one (“First Date”). It is a compelling question, as they possess quite distinct personalities, tendencies, and hobbies, the polarity of which creates many additional obstacles for a pair already fighting for their futures and lives.

Aside from their traits and quirks, the series also dedicates attention to each character’s marginalized identity, providing backgrounds often excluded or overlooked in the spy-fi genre. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” weaves John’s identity as a Black man and Jane’s multiracial identity as a half-Japanese woman into its plotlines with intention highlighting the constant flux of assumptions, judgments, and code-switching that is present in both daily life, covert missions, and the unique liminal realm in which this series lives. These threads alternate between serving as sources of tension and connection, increasing engagement for the audience with the characters’ backgrounds and illuminating the contrasting world that they now inhabit.

The urban, technothriller realm of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” is an aspirational one, beneath which lurks the sinister threat of suburban mediocrity. In episode four (“Double Date”), faced with another Smith couple operating at a higher-risk (and higher-pay) level, Mr. and Mrs. Smith consider leveling up to join them in a life-or-death game of keeping up with the Joneses. Upon entering John and Jane’s lavish NYC brownstone, the other Smith couple compliments the beauty of their home, but the series’ expertly-decorated, artfully-curated interiors grace the screen with irony behind the facade; John and Jane’s brownstone is company-provided and company-furnished, just like that of their counterpart couple. The series continually poses the question: How much of the Smiths’ shared, mutual spaces, and creations are due to their own efforts or predetermined by their nebulous spy agency? However, alongside these deeper inquisitions, the show’s intricate interior design offers an eye-catching break from the buildup of existential dread.

“Mr. & Mrs. Smith” strikes a balance between aesthetic appeal and lighthearted banter against the emotional weight of harder-hitting moments in the series. When missions go awry and the couple realizes that their marriage is just as much at stake as their lives, the audience is soothed by the picturesque locales of the snowy Italian Dolomites and sunny Lake Como. The vast majority of scenes do not revolve around dramatic, edge-of-your-seat action sequences as in the 2005 rendition. Instead, the series compels the audience to focus on the mundane — interactions that may initially appear uneventful but which later raise larger implications. Perhaps this focus is a play on the stereotype of married life as monotonous, or it may seek to mimic the elevated attention to details of a spy, where even the smallest elements cannot be overlooked.

Ultimately, the effect of such a balance positions “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” in a kind of middle-ground, general appeal. The series offers intriguing, creative twists on societal expectations through a spy-fi lens — juxtaposing, for instance, the couple’s thoughts of raising children with their company-ordered supervision of an elderly, childlike-behaving man in episode five (“Do You Want Kids?”). However, the series does not push too far into any specific genre to be revolutionary. Although the pacing can feel slow and certain episodic arcs remain inconclusive, the show is still a worthwhile watch for its raw, realistic dialogue and enticing reflections on the traps and triumphs of shared identity. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” is a thought-provoking confrontation with one’s own vulnerabilities laid bare.